reddwarffandomcom-20200217-history
Dave Lister
"I'm an animal! I'm a tasteless, uncouth, tone-deaf, mindless, revolting, randy, blokeish, semi-literate space bum." -Dave Lister (RD: Psirens) Third Technician '''David Lister' was the lowest ranking crew member of the Jupiter Mining Corporation spaceship Red Dwarf. Biography Due to a time travel paradox, Dave Lister was born on Red Dwarf, the son of navigation officer Kristine Kochanski and himself. (RD: Ouroboros) After realizing his true heritage, the adult Lister traveled back in time to leave his baby self under a pool table in the Aigburth Arms pub in Liverpool in the year 2155, thereby completing a predestination paradox. His official birthday was14 October, yet he celebrated his birthday "most of the time." A six-week old Lister was later found on a box marked Ouroboros, a message he always believed that described his parents inability to name him (Our Rob or Ros?), but it is actually the name of a brand of batteries. :Ouroboros is also an ancient symbol that depicts a serpent swallowing its own tail and forming a circle. It symbolizes ideas of cyclicality and primordial unity. This describes the cyclical nature of Lister's own conception. Childhood Lister was adopted soon after, but his adopted father died when he was six. His mother died soon afterwards. As a result, Lister was raised by his grandmother, a tough as nails, pipe-smoking woman, who headbutted the headmaster when Lister came bottom in French and spoiled him to the point of making him overweight, earning him the nickname "Fat Boy" until he was a teenager. He decided to lose weight after he was shocked to find that the coroner had to go back for more chalk for the outline of his grandmother when she was run over. Teenage Years Lister had been sexually active since very young, having lost his virginity at the age of twelve to Michelle Fisher in one of the bunkers on the ninth hole of Bootle Municipal Golf Course "par four, dogleg to the right, in the bunker behind the green". When he was seventeen, Lister formed his own band named Smeg and the Heads. Their best song was called Om. The young Lister had the tendency of calling everything crypto-fascist if he disliked it, or shady if he approved. After visiting his younger self via time travel, the older Lister was not impressed. :Young Lister was played by Emile Charles, Craig Charles' younger brother. Lister was accepted at art college, but dropped out on his first day when he learned his schedule would include lectures "first thing in the afternoon". Lister memorably went out with a girl named Lise Yates, but the relationship ended because he did not want to commit to a career, a fact that Lister has since secretly regretted. Aboard Red Dwarf Lister joined Red Dwarf as a third technician. He was the lowest ranking crewman on Red Dwarf and spent his time performing tasks too menial for the skutters. His immediate superior officer was Arnold Rimmer, who was also his bunkmate. Among his closest friend aboard Red Dwarf were Olaf Petersen, Selby and Chen. During his tour of duty, Lister met and fell in love with Kristine Kochanski. She became part of his ultimate goal, to buy a farm in Fiji with Kochanski and open a hot dog stand. :The nature of Lister and Kochanski's relationship changes from unrequited love in Series I to a short, passionate relationship in later series that was cut short by Kochanski herself. Lister was imprisoned in a stasis booth because he smuggled a cat. (RD: The End) While Lister was in stasis, a release of lethal radiation occurred on board and killed the entire crew. Holly, the ship's computer, kept Lister in stasis for three million years until the radiation levels decreased. The Last Human in the Universe Lister was revived three million years later and found himself the last human in the universe and three million years away from home. In order to keep him sane, Holly activated a holographic simulation of Arnold Rimmer to keep Lister company. Lister also found the last remnant of a race that evolved from his cat, whom he simply named The Cat. Through the Cat, Lister discovered that during his three million years in stasis, the cats had deified him, naming him Cloister the Stupid. After a sexual liaison with his female alter-ego from a female-oriented alternate universe, Lister gave birth to twin sons named Jim and Bexley, named after the Zero-G football player, Jim Bexley Speed. Due to them being born in a different reality to their conception, both of them grew to be eighteen years old within three days, so to make sure they did not die within a fortnight, Lister sent them back to their mother's dimension. Future Echoes The future of Lister is uncertain as several glimpses of his future have been seen. He ended up as a brain in a jar, where his trademark dreadlocks are attached too. :This outcome was presumably undone when the present crew destroyed their time drive, disallowing the path the future crew had taken up to that point. Another future version of Lister appears be a 181-year-old man who dies while trying to take a bra off with his teeth. In one episode where Lister changed the past, he ended up as a billionaire who died at age ninety-eight when he lost control of the plane he was flying while making love to his fourteenth wife. :This outcome was also presumably undone by Rimmer's actions. There is also a future version of Lister where he goes back in time and marries Kochanski (RD: Stasis Leak). :Since according to '''Stasis Leak' the future version of Lister came from five years into the future of the "present" version of Lister, it would place the future Lister somewhere in Series VI. None of the episodes in this series deal with this event, which might mean that the event never happened, at least with the "main" version of Lister. The even could have conceivably happened with an alternate version of Lister from a parallel universe or it might have happened between episodes or between Series VI and Series VII and wasn't shown on screen or mentioned again. It could also be argued that the events have yet to happen.'' Personality Lister is extremely slobby and very unmotivated. His best shirt has two curry stains on the front, and prior to going into stasis, he saved money by never buying soap or deodorant. He describes himself as a "space bum". He loves spicy Indian foods, specially curry and vindaloo and drinking large amounts of lager. His hair is kept in dreadlocks on the back of his head, which he seems to have for most of his life. :Old Lister from Future Echoes has dreadlocks that run the length of his body. Lister has a tattoo on his right buttock, dedicated to the love of his life: it is a heart with an arrow through it and underneath it has in dripping curry sauce the text I love Vindaloo. One of his biggest fears is enclosed spaces. Lister suffers from claustrophobia, which stems from an incident when a vengeful husband caught him making love to his wife, in the supermarket where he was employed. The man kidnapped the naked Lister, locked him in a box and threatened to chuck him into a river. Lister begged for mercy and was finally released onto the stage of a local theater in the nude, in the middle of the Bootle Amateur Players' production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Lister was warm-hearted and occasionally very introspective, and according to Rimmer, extremely optimistic and naive. :Lister is in many ways complete opposite of Rimmer and the two are constantly at odds with each other. It is presumably this reason that Holly picked Rimmer to come back as a hologram in order to keep Lister sane. Rimmer was constantly pointing out Lister's stupidity, but in actual fact Lister was quite bright, although he was indisposed to use his intelligence to any great degree. He was capable of piloting a spaceship very well, of operating Red Dwarf and had a knack for mechanical repairs, particularly amateur cybernetics. He was literate, despite Rimmer's claims to the contrary, but he was not a regular reader, except for comic books. Lister believed himself to be an excellent guitarist, but his belief was misplaced. His companions force him to practice his guitar only outside of the ship in a space suit. :In RD: Psirens the crew were able to distinguish a psiren disguised as Lister from the real Lister because the psiren plays guitar like "the ghost of Hendrix" — as Lister believes himself to play. Lister eventually acknowledged his inability to play the guitar to at least some degree. After losing his arm in an accident, Kryten helped him play guitar again. After hearing the result, he commented. "at least now I'm only half crap." (RD: Nanarchy) Dave Lister wasalso known as 'the king of crap' for purchasing an assorted amount of arguably useless things, including a talking toilet, a talking toaster with artificial intelligence, and two robot goldfish, which he named Lennon and McCartney. After being revived from stasis, Lister's biggest regret was not achieving his dream life of moving to Fiji and opening his stand. This idea became the cat people's version of Heaven. Even after three million years drifting in space, Lister still held on to this dream, trying to revive Kochanski at any possible opportunity. When Lister meets an alternate universe incarnation of Kochanski, he is given the chance to create a child. When the child is born, he takes it back in time and space to the pool table when he was first discovered. This means that Lister is essentially his own father, and his girlfriend is his mother. :Presumably he is also the father of the various alternate universes Lister has seen since most of these other versions would not have had this opportunity. This lends credence to Lister's claim that he is the "definitive version." Skills Lister was a man of many skills. He has some technical knowledge and is able to repair some machinery. He was also an excellent pilot and pool player. He also had some skill in the kitchen, inventing new dishes such as the beer milkshake and the triple fried egg, chili, chutney sandwich. Lister also had some knowledge of the international language of Esperanto. Likes and Dislikes Lister likes Kristine Kochanski, The Cat, Kryten, Holly, Olaf Petersen and his other friends. He loves Indian food (especially curry and chicken vindaloo), beer, Rastabilly Skank, and golfing. His favorite movie is It's a Wonderful Life and his favorite sandwich is fried egg-chili-chutney. Lister dislikes Arnold Rimmer, being stuck on Red Dwarf with Rimmer, sharing a room with Rimmer, and being ranked lower than Rimmer. Quotes * Dave Lister: Rimmer, look, I know it's wrong of me to speak ill of the dead and all that, but you're still a smeghead. * Dave Lister: Get out of town! Your nickname was never Ace! Maybe Ace-hole. * Dave Lister: His name's Rimmer. Or Smeghead. Or Dinosaur Breath or Molecule Mind. And on a really special occasion when you want to be really mega-polite to him, Kryten, we're talking MEGA-polite, in those exceptional circumstances, you can call him Arse-hole. * Captain Hollister: OK, just one thing before the disco. Holly tells me that he's sensed a non-human life form aboard. * Dave Lister: Sir, it's Rimmer! * Dave Lister: Sometimes I think it's cruel giving machines a personality. My mate Petersen once brought a pair of shoes with artificial intelligence. Smart Shoes, they were called. It was a neat idea. No matter how blind drunk you were, they would always get you home. Then he got ratted one night in Oslo, and woke up the next morning in Burma. See, the shoes got bored just going from his local to the flat. They wanted to see the world, man, y'know? He had a helluva job getting rid of them. No matter who he sold them to, they'd show up again the next day! He tried to shut them out, but they just kicked the door down, y'know? * Arnold Rimmer: Is this true? * Dave Lister: Yeah! Last thing he heard, they'd sort of, erm, robbed a car and drove it into a canal. They couldn't steer, y'see. * Arnold Rimmer: Really?! * Dave Lister: Yeah. Petersen was really, really blown away by it. He went to see a priest. The priest told him, he said, it was alright, and all that, and the shoes were happy, and they'd gone to heaven. Y'see, it turns out shoes have soles. * Dave Lister: Kryten, I'm gonna teach you how to lie and cheat if it's the last thing I do. I want you to be unpleasant, cruel, and sarcastic. * Kryten: But you would not profit by it. You would gamble your safety for a mere android? Is this the human value you call 'friendship'? * Dave Lister: Don't give me this Star Trek crap. It's too early in the morning. * Dave Lister: Machines do not have souls. Computers and calculators do not have an afterlife. You don't get hairdryers with tiny little wings, sitting on clouds and playing harps! * Dave Lister: Yee-es! I'm a sex beast! * Arnold Rimmer: "Oh, come on, Lister, you've dated worse." * Dave Lister: "Only due to very poor disco lighting." Behind the Scenes *In the books by Grant Naylor, Lister went on a drunken Monopoly board pub crawl with his friends to celebrate his 25th birthday, where he got very, very drunk. When he awoke, he was on Mimas, one of Saturn's moons, wearing a lady's pink crimplene hat and a pair of yellow fishing waders, with no money and a passport in the name of "Emily Berkenstein", and a worrying rash. Lister, determined to make enough money to get back home, steals hoppers (the equivalent of taxis on Mimas) but he loses all his money after being attacked by a drug addict, hooked on the drug Bliss. Penniless, Lister signs up for a job on the mining ship Red Dwarf, which was due to make a mining run to the outer solar system, and then back to Earth. He barely qualifies for a place on the ship, having only one GCSE, which was in Technical Drawing, which he failed. In the book, he deliberately lets Frankenstein be discovered so that he would be placed in stasis, thus getting back to Earth in (subjectively) zero time. *According to the deleted scenes on the Series VI DVD, Lister's tatoo was obtained while on planet leave on Ganymede with Petersen, who spiked his cocktail with four-star petrol. When he woke up the next day he had enrolled as a novice monk in a Ganymedian monastery. *In the book Better Than Life which explores different adventures than the TV series, Lister eventually discovers Earth, but finds that it is ruled by eight-foot-long cockroaches. He becomes their king and plans to rebuild the planet. The others find him thirty-six years later, after believing Lister was missing for a fortnight due to a time dilation. Later, after Lister dies of a heart attack in a confrontation with a polymorph, his body is taken to the alternative universe where time runs backwards, possibly the dimension in RD: Backwards and is told that he will be rescued in thirty-six years time. Two accounts of what followed, which are inconsistent with each other are the follow-up books Backwards and The Last Human. The latter also features yet another alternate Lister, this one adopted by a disturbed upper-middle class couple, rather than "our" Lister's adopted parents, and suffering extreme sociopathy as a result. The former tells how he unspent eight years in prison for murder and had a relationship with Kochanski, but backwards. Category:Characters